Quality Control in Education: — The Span of Control Controversy ‐Some Practical Considerations

This article gives the background to the introduction of a statutory system of staff appraisal in schools in England. It explains and provides insights into the various stages of the appraisal process from a management perspective. It begins from the premise that a manager is responsible for the performance of staff which he or she manages. Finally, it discusses a number of issues which are problematic and which need to be resolved if a staff appraisal scheme is to be successful from both the individual's and the school's viewpoints.     

Building resilient schools in Russia: effective policy strategies*

The article uses the framework of resiliency to examine the strategies of principals in schools working under challenging socio-economic conditions that show higher-than-expected educational results. We collected a unique set of data within the Russian ‘National monitoring of education markets and organisations’ programme. This work continues the study, begun in 2014, of the peculiarities of the functioning conditions, management and educational strategies of different groups of schools (urban, rural, implementing higher-level programmes, private, etc.), where authors supplement the economic indicators of school performance with socio-economic contextual factors. A contextualisation model was applied to distinguish the resilient schools studied and the socio-economic characteristics for each school. The typical strategies of principals of resilient schools are as follows: recruiting more successful students from other schools, the branding of the school, creating a culture of high expectations for staff and students, and a less bureaucratic management style.     

Is 'School Effectiveness' Anti-Democratic?

This paper explores the connections between School Effectiveness as a research paradigm and developments in policy and practice. With a particular focus on the English school system, 'effectiveness' is examined as a discourse which underpins the accountability regime, and in terms of its influence on the related field of School Improvement. Anti-democratic tendencies in areas such as school leadership, teacher professionalism, curriculum and pedagogy are related to a failure, at the heart of the 'effectiveness' concept, to give critical consideration to social and educational aims.     

对英国NCSL学院的学校领导教育模式的研究

简要介绍了英国NCSL学院的学校领导教育模式，并分析其特点和存在的问题，进而提出其教学模式对我国的学校领导教育体系的构建和大学治理的启示。     

Bottling fog? The quest for instructional management

Elsewhere, the authors have unpacked instructional leadership and have documented that such leadership is associated with more effective schools. Indeed, there has been for a considerable time nearly universal acceptance that learning-centered leadership should provide the central platform on which leadership is enacted. In this paper, a less sanguine narrative is provided on instructional management. Specifically, it documents that for all the evidence and recognition of importance, learning-focused leadership remains a small domain of action for leaders at the school and district levels. It then focuses on both the culture of the profession of school administration and the nature of schooling to explain why in the face of considerable energy and effort only marginal improvements have been realized in deepening instructional leadership. It closes with an analysis of possible paths going forward.     

学校改进活动中校长与教师转型的实现——基于分布式领导思想的思考

学校改进是促进教育变革,提升教育质量的重要手段之一。当前,我国正处在教育改革的重要时期,普遍开展的学校改进活动中,如何正确认识和理解校长领导力转型和教师专业转型的关系,并采取何种策略促进校长领导力转型和教师专业转型是一个具有现实意义的重要问题。分布式领导思想对于我们更好地认识这一问题提供了新的启示。     

Towards a Methodology for Teacher‐Based Classroom Research

Educational research and evaluation for the purpose of improving practice is becoming increasingly common. The teacher‐researcher movement, LEA sponsored self‐evaluation schemes, for example, both involve teachers in reviewing their own practice or the practices of the school as an organization, with the express purpose of utilizing the review data for professional or school improvement. Unfortunately, the methodology for research and evaluation in schools is problematic; one reason for this is the difficulty in deriving valid inferences from data that are often qualitative in kind and subjective in manner. Although there is a body of literature that describes ways of collecting data on the functioning of schools and classrooms, there is little guidance as to how to analyse it. This presents particular difficulties for the teacher or school staff who, for example, are trying to make sense out of a mass of data accumulated from a self‐evaluation exercise. The following paper is an attempt to provide support for teachers and schools in such a predicament: it suggests a method for analysing qualitative data emerging from school‐based research efforts that draws on the traditions of sociological and anthropological field work.     

Strategic leadership for large‐scale reform: the case of England's national literacy and numeracy strategy

Both ‘strategic’ and ‘distributed’ forms of leadership are considered promising responses to the demands placed on school systems by large‐scale reform initiatives. Using observation, interview and survey data collected as part of a larger evaluation of England's National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies, this study inquired about sources of leadership, the distribution of leadership functions across roles and how such distribution could also provide the strategic coordination necessary for successful implementation of such an ambitious reform agenda